


The Way It Is Remembered

by calathea



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan and Duck remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way It Is Remembered

The way Duck remembers it, the night when he admitted to himself he was gay started with his hand up Deena's shirt.

It was dusk, and they were necking in the front seat of his father's truck on the road by the Watch. Deena was slightly flushed, her body warm and loose against his. His hands were under her pink ruffled blouse, slipping higher and higher. He closed his eyes and pressed a slightly desperate kiss to her lipstick-tinted lips. She shifted in his arms, pushing her breasts against his chest, and making a small, muffled noise in her throat. When he released her lips, her breathing was quick, excited.

Nothing. He felt nothing. Bored, maybe, and his shoulders felt tense and stiff.

One of her hands dropped suddenly to his lap, and her pink-polished nails inched towards his groin. He pulled away, letting her hand slip from his thigh onto the bench seat. "I should get you home." His voice was rougher than usual.

She pouted. "It's not late." The frills on her shirt shivered as she took a deep breath. She smiled up at him invitingly, her lips shiny from lipstick and kissing.

Duck ran a hand across his mouth, feeling the stickiness of makeup on his own lips. "I have to get the truck home to my dad." He started the engine, and didn't look over at her once during the short drive. By the time they reached her home, she'd crossed her arms over her chest, and her pouting lips were trembling with hurt pride. She didn't speak when she got out of the truck, just slammed the door hard enough to rattle all the windows.

Duck winced, put the truck back in gear and drove home. His father was in the living room, a beer in one hand, the flickering light of the TV the only illumination. "I'm back," Duck said, not expecting or receiving a response.

He threw himself down on his bed when he reached his room, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment before unbuttoning his jeans, lowering the zip, and slipping his hand around his cock. He thought about Deena's breasts, warm and firm against him, about the wet kisses they'd exchanged. His hand slid over his own skin in a familiar rhythm. He raised his other arm, crooked his elbow to cover his eyes, and tried not to think about anything. Odd fragments of images played behind his eyelids. Buddy, his hair damp with sweat and curling over his forehead, walking past the bleachers after practice. Sandra, twining herself around Phil Corkum at school, the way his hand slipped into the back pocket of her jeans and squeezed. The guy, a few weeks ago, who'd approached Duck at the Watch when he'd escaped there one night, trying to get away from the heavy silence of home. The way the stranger's hand had felt around his dick, the words he'd whispered in Duck's ear after Duck had gasped and groaned with pleasure, the bloom of pain when he'd whacked the guy in the jaw with his fist.

Just that memory - not the punch, but what had gone before - was enough to make him come now, and he grunted once, trying to be quiet. After a few dazed seconds, he reached for the kleenex, wiped himself off, shucked his jeans and t-shirt, and lay back on the bed. He counted off in his head the days until high school finished.

_Queer_, the man had said, before Duck hit him. _What' s a queer kid like you doing in a town like this?_

Duck rolled over, onto his stomach, and pounded his pillow a couple of times. _Queer_. The word echoed through his head. _Queer_. Was that what he was?

He thumped the pillow again. It didn't matter. He wasn't going to be in a town like this much longer. Whatever he was, he going to go be it somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't Wilby. He lay still a while, and finally fell asleep to the murmured, relentless noise from the television in the other room.

* * * * * * *

Dan remembers the night he was found out as a broken series of nightmares, in which pain and pleasure were curiously one and the same thing.

The day had just been a day - long, sunny, and sleepy. A few customers had stopped by the store, his wife had come and gone with lunch in a paper bag, he'd got a new pile of videos in the mail from his mainland distributor. The warmth of the sun was welcome, and he had propped the door of his store open. Just a day, like a hundred others since they'd moved to Wilby.

The cloud had descended by the time he left, pushing down on him until his head ached and he felt heavy and lethargic. A bead of sweat rolled down his back and he twitched and writhed, trying to throw off the ticklish sensation. He suddenly hated everything: hated Wilby, hated the video store, hated the packed lunches and the heat and the life he lived where nothing ever happened, nothing ever got better, where everything just stayed the same and the same and the same, no matter what you did.

He sat crouched over the steering wheel of his car, the vinyl of the wheel and the cheap seats hot and clammy where they touched his skin. A passing car brought him out of his semi-stupor, music blaring through open windows, then fading in a minor key as it sped away. Mechanically, he turned over the engine of his own car, his internal monologue still churning over the things he hated, all the world of things he loathed and wanted gone. He didn't want to go home, didn't want to have the same conversation he seemed to have every night, didn't want any of it. A few minutes driving took him by the Watch, and he stopped there, hoping for some cool air, for something to take the heat out of his mind, so it wouldn't spill over in anger at his wife.

His shirt stuck to him when he got out of the car, and he tried to pull it away from his skin as he walked down to the shore. There was a little breeze here, just enough to stir the damp ends of his hair where it lay, too long, against the back of his neck. He sat on a rock, and closed his eyes, trying not to think.

Long minutes later, a quiet voice interrupted his revolving thoughts. "You OK?"

He opened his eyes, and through the gloom of evening, made out spiky blonde hair, light-coloured eyes. "Yeah. I'm... I'm OK."

The man quirked an eyebrow. "OK." He took a few steps away. "You sure?"

Dan nodded, eager just for the man to be gone. He seemed to accept it this time. Dan closed his eyes again, hearing footsteps crunch away from him on the pebbled ground. Time passed, he wasn't sure how long, and the voice that broke through his thoughts this time was deeper, differently accented. _Mainlander_, he thought automatically, before he even opened his eyes. "Got a light?" The man was dark-haired, more heavily built than Dan.

"A light?" Dan struggled for a moment with the mundane request, still feeling disassociated from himself, barely tethered to the earth. "No. No, sorry, I don't smoke."

The man sat down next to him, too close. "You waiting for someone?"

Dan shifted away, his arm brushing against that of the man next to him."Waiting? No."

The man moved closer again. "Maybe I'll do." He leaned in suddenly, and kissed Dan hard on the lips. Without warning, Dan slammed back into his own skin, pleasure prickling over him and raising the hair at the back of his neck. His arms, when he raised them, felt unfamiliar, as if he had been so long absent from his body that his muscles had atrophied, without the strength to resist. He gripped the stranger's arms at the shoulders, feeling the movement of muscles over bone as the man's hands slid down his body, pausing at the waistband of his pants. The man moved away from the kiss, pressed his face to Dan's neck, his stubble rasping at Dan's cheek. "What do you like?" the man asked, his breath damp and unpleasant against Dan's throat. "What do you like?"

It was easier not to answer, not to make a choice, and he just gasped silently as the man slid his hand into Dan's pants, closed around him. _So long, Oh God, so long_, he thought and heard himself groan, quietly. The man's hand moved rhythmically, the steady pumping grip a little too tight for Dan, almost at the edge of pain. The loud voices were still an unwelcome intrusion. "Down here!"

The man pulled away sharply, his teeth gleaming as he snarled some expletive. "Time to go," he whispered, before crunching away quickly over the uneven pebbled ground.

A beam of light bobbed and swung over Dan, drifting over his open pants, over his face no doubt red with shame. "Zip up your pants," a male voice said roughly. "We don't all want to see."

With trembling fingers, he obeyed, fumbling with the fastening. There was a noise off to his right, and the light swung that way, giving him a moment to compose himself in the dark. The blond man stood unmoving in the beam, his shirt half undone, his lips red and full.

There was a woman beside the man with the flashlight, holding a notebook in one hand and pen in the other. She knew Dan, had interviewed him for The Sentinel when he first opened the store. She asked him questions in a quick, breathless voice as he walked back to his car. The blond man remained silent, keeping pace with the little group as they approached Dan's car. As Dan moved to open the car door their eyes met for a moment, and Dan felt a shocking second of recognition, before the sharp prick of nails in his skin drew his attention back to the woman at his side, hooking her hands around his arm. He tugged, broke free, and sank into the seat of his car.

He could not have described the journey home, nor the details of getting out of his car, unlocking the front door. He came back to himself at the door to the bedroom they shared. She was already in bed, the covers rising and falling evenly as she slept. He went to sit in the living room, knowing she would not notice his absence, inured as she was to his nightly insomniac wanderings. He ached, his body awake for the first time in years, and he hated it, hated what it wanted. Hated that a stranger could do this to him and his wife could not. And he still hated Wilby, and the store, and the car, and now, oh God, now, he also hated himself. The pressure began to build behind his eyes again, until he wanted to howl with pain, just scream at the futility of it all. _No matter what I do_, he thought, _no matter what I do, it's always just the same._

He let his head fall back against the sofa, and the tears slipped unnoticed down his cheeks.


End file.
